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2021 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

The Brazilian Case: The Effect of Social Media on a Democratic Regime of Today

Author : André Gualtieri

Published in: Democracy and Globalization

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

In recent years, one of the most relevant issues in political and legal philosophy has been the relationship between democratic regimes and social media. This is because it has become clear that platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have come to play a determining role in the way politics is being handled in liberal democracies.
This chapter analyzes this relationship based on the Brazilian presidential elections of 2018. Brazil is one of the largest democracies in the world, whose population actively participates in Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp.
Some problematic effects of social media can be pointed out: they favor the dissemination of false news and extreme visions, undermining democratic coexistence; people start to live in “bubbles”, to experience “realities” increasingly distant and to communicate less, which generates polarization. The formation of these “virtual ghettos” has drastically reduced the possibility of dialogue with differently minded people and the opportunity to perceive a common reality. To what extent could all this compromise the health of democratic regimes?

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previous chapter Dealing with Disinformation from the Perspective of Militant Democracy: A Case Study of Taiwan’s Struggle to Regulate Disinformation
next chapter ‘Cambridgenalization’ in Politics? The Spanish Act 3/2018, December 5, Data Protection Regulation and the Future of Democracy
Footnotes
1
This research is supported by a grant awarded by Coordination of Improvement of Higher-Level Personnel (CAPES), a foundation linked to the Ministry of Education of Brazil.
I would like to thank Alberto Ghibellini and Charlotte Sieber-Gasser for the kind and careful revision of this paper.
 
2
Social media are “Internet-based platforms that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content, usually using either mobile or web-based technologies,” Margetts et al. (2016), p. 5. As cited in Sunstein (2018a), p. 22.
 
3
Floridi (2014), p. VI.
 
4
Clement (2019a).
 
5
Clement (2019b).
 
6
Clement (2019c).
 
7
Clement (2019d). There are over 340 million WhatsApp users in India alone, making it the leading country in terms of WhatsApp audience size. Second-ranked Brazil had 99 million WhatsApp messenger users. The mobile messenger is the most popular messaging service worldwide.
 
8
Normative ruling N° 0600920-86.2018.6.00.0000, Superior Electoral Court.
 
9
Siqueira (2018).
 
10
Rodrigues (2008), p. 544. My translation.
 
11
Rodrigues (2008), p. 546.
 
12
Ibid.
 
13
Ibid.
 
14
Moura and Corbellini (2019).
 
15
Centro de pesquisa e documentação de história contemporânea do brasil (cpdoc), ‘Jair Messias Bolsonaro’ (FGV CPDOC, 2010) <https://​www.​fgv.​br/​cpdoc/​acervo/​dicionarios/​verbete-biografico/​jair-messias-bolsonaro> accessed 11 March 2020.
 
16
Ibid.
 
17
Ibid.
 
18
Câmara dos deputados (2020).
 
19
Benites (2019).
 
20
Moura and Corbellini (2019), p. 661.
 
21
Moura and Corbellini (2019), p. 142.
 
22
Ruediger (2014), p. 207.
 
23
Ibid.
 
24
Ibid. My translation.
 
25
Parente et al. (2019).
 
26
Ibid.
 
27
Oecdorg (2019).
 
28
“The name “refers to a laundry chain and a gas station in Brasilia that was used by one of the criminal organizations initially investigated to handle illicit money. Money changers were responsible for the financial movements and money laundering of countless individuals and legal entities, which ended up involving a wide variety of other crimes, such as international drug trafficking, corruption of public agents, tax evasion, foreign exchange evasion, extraction, smuggling of precious stones, embezzlement of public resources, among others. The convictions, supported by ample evidence produced by the federal police, resulted naturally from the unequivocal finding of a vast scheme of corruption and embezzlement of public resources unparalleled in Brazilian history,” Polícia federal (2018), my translation. Brazilian justice has condemned politicians from the most different parties in parliament, as well as former President Lula for participating in the scheme. Former Presidents Dilma Rousseff and Michel Temer are being prosecuted for crimes investigated by the operation.
 
29
Freire (2019).
 
30
A slang term that means paying a monthly allowance.
 
31
Freire (2019), n. 33.
 
32
Cntorgbr (2019).
 
33
Cerqueira et al. (2017) accessed 6 January 2020, my translation.
 
34
Ibid.
 
35
Uolcombr (2018).
 
36
Câmara dos deputados (2020).
 
37
Moura and Corbellini (2019), p. 205.
 
38
Tribunal superior eleitoral (2019).
 
39
Maia (2018).
 
40
Fgv dapp (2018a).
 
41
Fgv dapp (2018b).
 
42
Dappfgvbr (2019).
 
43
Moura and Corbellini (2019), p. 1341 (Is the book so long? Check pages).
 
44
Moura and Corbellini (2019), p. 1344.
 
45
Moura and Corbellini (2019), p. 1265.
 
46
Machado et al. (2018).
 
47
Valente (2019).
 
48
Meirelles (2018).
 
49
Moura and Corbellini (2019), p. 1276, my translation.
 
50
Moura and Corbellini (2019), p. 1281.
 
51
Mello (2018).
 
52
Moura and Corbellini (2019), p. 1509.
 
53
Moura and Corbellini (2019), p. 1513.
 
54
Hunter and Power (2019).
 
55
Observa2018combr (2019), my translation.
 
56
Poder360combr (2019).
 
57
Fgv dapp (2018c).
 
58
Constitution of Brazil, 5 October 1988, article 118.
 
59
Tribunal superior eleitoral (2018), my translation.
 
60
Ibid.
 
61
Ibid.
 
62
Ibid.
 
63
Maria Osmarina Marina da Silva Vaz de Lima v Facebook [2018] Representação 060054670.2018.6.00.0000 (Tribunal Superior Eleitoral) (Sérgio Silveira Banhos).
 
64
In this aspect, it is also possible to see a positive side in the social media, because they allow denial, clarification and truth about a fact to propagate with equal speed. In the past, it was often more difficult to undo a lie in situations where the victim did not have the means to make his version reach society as a whole. Social media make that easy. With them the rehabilitation of Alfred Dreyfus, for example, would not have taken 12 years.
 
65
Maria Osmarina Marina da Silva Vaz de Lima v Facebook (n 74).
 
66
Ibid.
 
67
Vaidhyanathan (2018), p. 5.
 
68
Vaidhyanathan (2018), p. 55.
 
69
A survey carried by IDEIA Big Data, a poll company, asked voters if they had seen and believed five of the most popular fake news on social media during the final weeks of the elections. An impressive 98.2% of Bolsonaro voters interviewed had been exposed to one or more of those pieces of false news, and 89.8% believed that they were based on truth. Moura and Corbellini (2019), p. 1473.
 
70
Guess et al. (2018).
 
71
Moura and Corbellini (2019), p. 1492, my translation.
 
72
Fergusson (2018).
 
73
Vaidhyanathan (2018), p. 4.
 
74
Vaidhyanathan (2018), p. 50.
 
75
The 2015 documentary film Best of Enemies directed by Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville narrates these debates that took place in August 1968.
 
76
Moura and Corbellini (2019), p. 1402.
 
77
Thorseth (2015), p. 223.
 
78
Ibid.
 
79
Sunstein (2018a), p. 6.
 
80
Sunstein (2018a), p. 1.
 
81
Sunstein (2018a), p. 3.
 
82
Sunstein (2018a), p. 12.
 
83
Barberá et al. (2015), p. 1532.
 
84
Barberá et al. (2015), p. 1533.
 
85
Barberá et al. (2015), p. 1537.
 
86
Ibid.
 
87
Ortellado et al. (2018), p. 32.
 
88
Ibid, my translation.
 
89
Machado et al. (2018).
 
90
Ibid.
 
91
Ibid.
 
92
Ibid.
 
93
Christiano (2018).
 
94
Houaiss and Villar (2009), p. 1043.
 
95
Cohen (2002), p. 21.
 
96
Rawls (1996), pp. 38–39.
 
97
Rawls (1996), p. 43.
 
98
Rawls (2003), pp. 121–122.
 
99
Sunstein (2018b), p. 84.
 
100
Ibid.
 
101
Calil and Ruediger (2018).
 
102
Sunstein (2018a), p. 254.
 
103
Ibid.
 
104
Sunstein (2018a), p. 129.
 
105
Vaidhyanathan (2018). O’neil (2016).
 
106
Sunstein (2018a), p. 215.
 
107
Barlow (1996).
 
108
Howard (2018).
 
109
Sunstein (2018a), p. 214.
 
110
Lemos and Konopacki (2018). Floridi and Cowls (2019).
 
111
Hartmann (2010), p. 85, my translation.
 
112
Floridi (2014), p. 85.
 
113
Floridi (2014), p. 86.
 
114
Verbeek (2015), p. 205.
 
115
Sunstein (2018a), p. 215.
 
Literature
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Metadata
Title
The Brazilian Case: The Effect of Social Media on a Democratic Regime of Today
Author
André Gualtieri
Copyright Year
2021
Book
Democracy and Globalization

Print ISBN: 978-3-030-69153-0

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-69154-7

Copyright Year: 2021

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69154-7_7

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